Captures

When did a photograph become a "capture"? Probably quite irrational, but I dislike the idea of photographs being "captures". I'm with Ansel Adams that photographs are "made".

BTW, I'm not having a pop at people who use the phrase "capture", I'm just curious as to where that use of the word comes from. I suspect it has its origins in the early days of digital photography, but have absolutely no evidence to back that up.

K.

I thought it came from early in the days of photography when Native Americans believed that the camera could "capture" their souls :

Interesting question. Possibly a consequence of the use (and over-use) of "capture the moment" in photography. Search for 'capture the moment' on the internet and the results are dominated by photography. I've no idea how, where, when or why that phrase started to be used, though. It appears to have been used about 10 years ago in an ad campaign for Canon printers.

And taking your question in another direction, when did a photograph become an image?

Steve

When 'artists' started messing around with them?

Probably when multiple shots are combined or photoshop is used excessively, neither of which could be described as photographs in the original sense.

It seems quite reasonable to me that the image of a scene is captured in the camera as best we can. The photograph is then made from the captured image during post processing.

Philip

Ah, I beg to differ, it is surely a photograph first, then as digital photography came along and post processing then it became an image.
This is becoming the classic Chicken and egg argument about which came first.

It could be suggested that the majority of viewers would probably regard the photograph as the positive rendering and artistic interpretation of the scene - i.e. bright tones bright and dark tones dark - in which case post processing has been around during most of the history of photography, not just digital.

Philip